Up until last may almost all of my portfolio's were comprised of dividend paying stocks, bonds and gold. Then last year all three of them got hammered. I had to make a choice. Sell them and get into the broader market or stay and risk a run up in interest rates clobbering the portfolio's. I flinched and unloaded most those positions and bought the broader market and some riskier areas as well. It worked magnificiently. Helped me recover the hit I took in the interest rate sensitive assets. Then this year the broader market gets whacked to start off the year, momo gets annihilated and of course yields drop and here we are again. So I spent a good portion of this year reversing course and loading back up on what I used to own (except gold, which is completely useless and should only be bought in phyz). This time around CNBC and their "rates are gonna rise" crowd can go fuck themselves. I don't care if the 10yr goes back to 3%. I ain't sellin, and I will only buy cheaper div paying stawks with a higher yield.

That is what the fed is fighting right now. No one is selling. No one believes rates will go up. There is no more volatility because this time everyone will cling to their div payers for dear life knowing nirp is on the way.

Have we been lulled into complacency by the extraordinary actions taken by central banks and governments over the last six years? This is a key question we must face. Have these actions really worked or merely masked over major flaws and problems?

And just for fun, consider that by not demanding the right kind of growth and by throwing money at problems we have only delayed and added to festering issues that face us in the future. In what most of us view as a fast moving world many people have come to think if a financial crisis doesn't occur today or in the next few weeks it is simply not going to happen at all. More on the subject of complacency in the article below.